


and he forgets things

by ioncehadabrain



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 10:19:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13972971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ioncehadabrain/pseuds/ioncehadabrain
Summary: he looks at her but he doesn't see her.





	and he forgets things

He looks at her, but he doesn’t see her.

When she was younger, Riza used to go out of her ways for her father’s attention, fighting tooth and nail for one glance, one gruffly throaty acknowledgement. In the backyard, up and down the sycamore tree, on that one curved, rough and steady bark, from the heart of the lush green, she yelled for her father, like the cherished little girl in the tales who was doomed to do without her mother since barely minutes into the realm of mortals but would always have a father to don her light soft steps – that was, until a terror entered the story, often in the form of a step-mother and a tragic accident that cost a life and another life’s worth of happiness – but Riza never had to see such a day, because instead the house just turned colder with each winter and quieter with each year turning on their feet and flying away. And so her father kept retreating from the sky and the rains and greens and the seasons, from the house, from Riza, into his study, into himself, into an ever revolving heaven-and-earth continuum – “ _5 days mark 1 week, 3 weeks mark 1 seasonal segment, 6 seasonal segments mark 1 season, 4 seasons mark 1 year, 1 year, 24 seasonal segments, 72 weeks_ ” – and he breaks them down, dissects them into particles into atoms and into some states beyond that, and takes this and that, raises this pattern and embraces this chaos and he watches the world build itself up from nothing, from scratches, over and over again, from inside his mind.

Probably. At least that was what the books said.

And there was a door forever shut off at Riza’s face, from Riza’s yelling, calling, whispering, thinking. Time had always run on a different scale in his study, and every time she slipped into the room to gather up leftovers, or clothes, or just anything short of tidiness – as much tidiness that could be ground from his labyrinth of books and papers, anyways – and left the hot tea with the cups and the kettle, and slipped out with the same nimble practiced stealth, closing the door behind her, Riza started to run. Softly, but as fast as possible, as fast, as quiet, as determined as she could at any given moment. Time ran differently in his room, filled his mind and bled through his form into her plane of reality, and Riza thought she should have been more curious at a chance to prod for a way in, but the simple fact remained that she was afraid, that every time she stepped into his study and loomed just outside his mind’s doors, she was more overwhelmed than excited, because it had been all quiet on her side of the doors for too long. She wanted the chance, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it.

Once upon a time, Riza thought she wanted to be the cherished girl whose feet were steadied with her father’s guidance into the world. But she had spent enough summers on her own up on the sycamore tree and winters on her own with everything to attend to and nothing for herself, save for the indulgence of her mother’s books-

(her mother’s, not his books, not her father’s terribly sophisticated codes barring her from ever understanding just anything, anything at all that always kept him from her, his daughter, kept him from ever tending to her needs and listening to how her days went and helping her with the cold and the hollows of the house and her thousands of questions and answers lost and half-formed, from a glance, from a ‘riza’. a simple, simple ‘riza.’ riza, you are here. riza, I am here. riza, speak. riza, hear me out. riza- 

_Riza_ , your mother traced versions of your name on the margin, here is how it went, at night after dinner she was heavy with you in her womb and by all means should have turned in, but she sat in her favorite chair in the kitchen, opened on the cleaned island next to a patch of fresh potatoes were two dictionaries, one collection of fragmented poetry, a book of tales, and a thick battered journal. Pencil and pen both in one hand, maneuvered between fumbling fingers, she wrote – ‘elizabeth? eliza – no, liza, lise, Lisbon, one day, lisa, terese, theresa, li- ri- R- riza? rrrrrrrrrrr. Riza.’)

( _I have a daughter, golden. beautiful_ – Riza, darling, dearest-)

The years rolled away, and Riza learned the way to be around her father, side-stepping just one beat away from his orbit and yet gravitated to him still, because she knew very well that even though she wasn’t to be cherished, she did want to cherish something still.

Even though he looked at her, but he didn’t see her.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i stole things from dave malloy, sappho and an astronomy/meteorology/calendar theory (is it a thing) book called 月令七十二候集解 ("a collective interpretation of the 72 phenological terms" god who even do this).
> 
> 2\. i wrote myself to an end on this one. there were supposed to be another 1000 words on how berthold saw riza but as an extension of his wife's last breath instead and he wanted to seal his life's work and what he believed to be his only life's worth with it. but i don't know how to confront the problem of the tattoo yet so that's gonna have to wait for another thousand years. also ... maybe i should just write a drabbles series to keep myself writing.
> 
> 3\. watch me name my stuffs after all of my favs from all of the musicals i've listened to. (which is not that many by the way, i am a woman of specific taste.)
> 
> 4\. i sleep at weird hours, i put my life on hold, i'm stressed out, and i am in need of validation.


End file.
